Monday Meeting. Week 5ive.

In my research/sketch book, I've started writing about a wider range of experiences that I can remember from childhood. Some involve losing my innocense with a sudden jolt, as Little Red Riding Hood may have felt she did. Because of the experiential writing, I find that I handle the book differently. I've started to include newspaper clippings that may relate or talk about another animator in the back of the book, held together with a single rubber band to hold the contents. I have then placed the book in a plastic baggie for safe keeping. The book is becoming precious. {I am precious: handle with care.}

I've given the book over to Kurt to read and comment in. I will work in my alternate research book along the way. I may make some books that start showing me who Red might actually be.

Today we conversed about books and about Red and what she may have been interested in. I was inspired by the recent issue of Esopus Magazine. Not only does the magazine house a project by Ed Ruscha (books) it also contains a segment on letters. I have been thinking about HOW to make Little Red more real. For example, her real name is Maisie according to information from this publisher, Antelope Publishing: Ongoing Tales. Her father was a wood-cutter. The incident occured on a bright Spring morning in the month of May. A new character, I had never heard of before, Farmer Hodge, is introduced. Kurt was suggesting I fill the book up as if it was her journal. Some of the items I can put in the journal are letters from family and friends. I can also design beer labels with unusual shapes and designs... that would signify Red's longing for a relationship with her father. Maybe that wasn't essential to her happiness. Right now, it's all still an investigation of her life and what she was like with only snippets revealing what the authors had intended for her.

Here are some disconnected thoughts based on our discussion.
• Evidence
• The evidence baggie
• A court of law
• The art work of John Copeland
• Kurt's friend Ward talks about banality. "Transform banality."
• Giving
• A symbol of generosity {Here Kurt was describing a story where a fellow artist he worked with handed Kurt something he found off of the street. Not only was this a gesture of friendship, it was a gift. At least, that is how it has since been viewed}.
• The goal is to delight people. Put my time into something that is a conduit to dispensing enjoyment.
• Little Red's evidence of existance.
• Little Red's diary. What did she write about? What notes or letters did she save to keep and read over and over again? What inquiries did she make? Why are those objects in her book?

I asked Kurt about doing more than one book of this nature. He suggested I stick with doing the one thesis book. I was thinking for sales.... and he reminded me that I don't need to traverse that territory at the moment.

This collection of evidence also reminds me of Multimedia Magazine in a box. I've been quite attracted to the Fluxus movement and work that entails a collection of sorts. I think that is why I'm highly motivated in the Art and Anthropology class. I will have to start writing more about some of the other classes I am taking at this time as well. My monotype class is quite wonderful as well. The instructor is great. I like the way he speaks with me and allows me to be who I am, even though I may bug him at times, and I am free to do my work. I'm free to encourage others without rath. It's a great Friday class. We have tea time. Can you imagine? Well... for another topic.

Kurt told me of an artist that shared ephemera like letters, labels, flowers, embedded in a poets book. He thought it quite powerful and by the way he was describing the work, I'm sure I would think so as well.

Strategies for the book or books:
1. A series of books
2. Divide the book up into the characters. One book, but chapters that house the character who is narrating.
3. Reminder of the movie called, Quills about the Marquis De Sade, his trials and tribulations during a section of his life and how he was crazy to write. Is Little Red like that?
4. We are creating an artifact of Red's life. Something that will get her out of the realm of the tale and a little closer to real life.

Thoughts.
I may write letters to current friends under the guise of Little Red Riding Hood. The letter, the paper, the seal, the type of ink used will all play an important roll in developing some of her character as I interpret the readings.

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Readings from Little Red Riding Hood Uncloacked. Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale by Catherine Orenstein.

Before the introduction starts, she entices us with a quite by famous author Charles Dickens. "Little Red Riding Hood was my first Love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss."

Nearing the end of her introduction she writes, "Folklore is collective, oral and ephemeral. It is a dance between tellers and listenders that includes jokes, tall tales, gossip at the kitchen table, and fairy tales as they were once told around the fire or in the fields - - always changing and constantly adopting to new cultural landscapes. Yet as pen meets paper, characters freeze in time and space, like the chef caught in the act of slapping the kitchen boy in Sleeping Beauty's palace. There he stands, arm raised, mouth open in reproach, and a century-old grease stain on his apron. Text is forever locked in context. Storybook heroes and heroines acquite not only a period wardrobe but also a date, author, presumed audence and worldview. Whether in the homespun cloak of an old yarn or powdered and perfumed for the French Court; whether bound and corseted in the fashion of Victorian Europe, or dolled up by twentieth-century drag queens, fairy tale heroes and heroines record the mentality of their day - - and none more impressively than Little Red Riding Hood. Of durable identity, unmistakable even when she changes nationality, age, appearance, name and (yes) even clothing, Little Red Riding Hood is instantly remembered and easily recognizable amongst thousands of tales and tens of thousands of characters. And over the years she has been cloaked, according to sockal and ethical fashion, in countless meanings and morals, warnings and winks." (page 12 - 13)

In the last paragraph of Orenstein's introduction she says, "... to explore some of her multitude of reincarnations, not in search of universal truths, but on the contrary, as evidence of how human truths change."

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Here is a link to a silly Little Red inspired calculus site.
Karl's Calculus Tutor